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- Convenor:
-
Philip Carl Salzman
(McGill University)
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- Track:
- Survival and Extinction
- Location:
- University Place 1.218
- Sessions:
- Friday 9 August, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Tribes are often thought of as primordial social forms displaced by the state and by civilization. And yet tribes continue to appear and act in practical affairs. What is the current status of tribes, how and why do they mobilize, and why do tribes continue to exist and operate?
Long Abstract:
Tribes are often thought of as primordial social forms displaced by the state and by civilization. Except by some "postcolonial" anthropologists who do not grant "tribe" an authentic indigenous existence, dismissing it as an invention of reactionary and racist anthropologists and colonialists.
And yet we are repeatedly surprised by the appearance and agency in practical affairs of these allegedly imaginary entities. The Pashtun tribes side with the Taliban against the Western forces, or resist the Taliban; assert their independence in the tribal regions, and attack the Pakistani Government. The tribes of al-Anbar Province of Iraq were active participants with al-Qaeda in the anti-Western insurgency, but later switched to ally with the Americans against al-Qaeda. The Bedouin tribes of Cyrenaica, Libya, who fought two wars with the Italians, and who continued to be local political players during the Gadhafi regime, led the rebellion against Gadhafi, and are now likely to contest power in the new Libya. The Yarahmadzai tribe of Iranian Baluchistan that I lived with and studied would be more than surprised to hear that no such entity actually existed, or was invented by me, or by colonialists (none of whom ever managed to arrive in the region).
This panel presents an opportunity for researchers from various regions to explore the current status of tribes, to consider the ways and extent to which they mobilize, and for what purposes, and to theorize why tribes continue to exist and operate in the contemporary world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 9 August, 2013, -Rajanikant Pandey (Central University of Jharkhand)
Paper short abstract:
The present paper describes the contested idea of tribe and indigenous in India keeping in background the foundation of the Centre for Indigenous Culture studies in a newly established Central University of Jharkhand. The paper conceptualizes the indigenous debate as a continuum of originality to marginality. At the outset paper theorize why tribes siege to exist and operate in the contemporary India.
Paper long abstract:
The present paper describes the contested idea of tribe and indigenous in India keeping in background the foundation of the Centre for Indigenous Culture studies in a newly established Central University of Jharkhand. The Centre runs a five year integrated Masters course in Indigenous Culture studies as well as the Phd course. The paper reflects upon the course curriculum, content and intent of the teaching in the Centre since its foundation. It further raises the problems and opportunities of sharing indigenous culture studies to a classroom consisting of ''tribe and non-tribe'' students. The author who is part of the Centre for Indigenous Culture studies since its foundation autobiographically outlines the specificities of teaching Indigenous culture studies as a global discourse in a University located in tribal province of India.
The paper attempts to propose a meaningful model of understanding indigenous situation in India, against the backdrop of various ways in which the concept of tribe dominates the ethno-anthropological and administrative discourses in India. It dwells into the history of use of term tribe and scheduled tribe in India and how it relates with the mind of people who belongs to these tribal groups. The paper re-conceptualizes the indigenous debate in global universal context as a continuum of originality to marginality and how the Indian Subcontinent is an ideal example of negotiating tribal identity across this continuum. At large paper intends to theorize why tribes as represented in mainstream literature siege to exist and operate in the contemporary India.
Philip Carl Salzman (McGill University)
Paper short abstract:
Independent tribes are polities based upon collective responsibility and self help, with the means of coercion distributed throughout the population. Tribes effectively encapsulated by states become identity and interest groups, mobilizing their members for defense, influence, and patronage.
Paper long abstract:
In Iranian Baluchistan, the Sarhadi tribes were politically independent during the later Qajar period, but were effectively encapsulated by Reza Shah in 1935 after a military campaign. Following the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty in the late 1979 during the Islamic Revolution, the Baluch tribes rose and fought Persian Sistanis for control of Zahedan, the provincial capital, but were eventually suppressed by the forces of the Islamic Revolution. Encapsulated once again, the tribes have been submerged in a flood of Shia Persians from outside the province, who have rapidly increased urbanization, commerce, and education. A resistence movement, the Jundallah, based in the Rigi tribe, has attacked state security forces on behalf of the interests of the Baluchi Sunni population.
The Kirgiz tribes were incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century, and launched a costly and losing rebellion in the early 20th century. Under the Russian Empire, and its successor the Soviet Union, tribes as independent polities were suppressed. But the tribes continued as identity and interest groups, capable of mobilizing members, and sought and won patronage on their behalf. With the fall of the U.S.S.R. in 1992, some Kirgiz turned to a revivification and formalization of tribes (just as others turned to Islam or Western development) in response to the vacuum of organization and purpose.
Joshua Jet Friesen (McGill University)
Paper short abstract:
I investigate the changing role played by named descent groups, called here ‘tribes’, in Libya. Focusing on the relationships between tribes and the Senussi religious fraternity of the early 1900s, the revolutionary committees of the 70s and 80s, and the contemporary civil war, highlights this change.
Paper long abstract:
I investigate the changing role played by named descent groups, which I will refer to as 'tribes', in Libya from the early 1900s to now. Focusing on the types and instances of reported interactions between Libyan tribes and the Senussi religious fraternity, Qaddafi's revolutionary committees, and the modern militias that prosecuted Libya's most recent war, shows how Libyan tribes have changed and adapted to new socioeconomic circumstances. For instance, tribal interaction with the Senussi was a seemingly structural instance of inter-group mediation through shared religious sentiment (Evans-Pritchard 1949, Peters 1968), whereas tribal influence on local elections (circa 1975) seems a clearer instance of political complimentary opposition wherein local Shaikhs attempted to equalize the respective representation of oppositional parties (Davis 1987). Drawing nearer to the present it becomes more difficult to ascertain - with history's ad hoc precision - categorical instances of tribal interaction with Libyan life and politics. Granting this, media reportage of the war in Libya points, in most cases, to some level of tribal participation/influence inside of the various rebel militias that supported the National Transitional Council. Research I conducted in the summer of 2012 aimed to more fully discern the nature of this involvement.
John Galaty (McGill University)
Paper short abstract:
In what contexts should an analytical and descriptive discipline like Anthropology use 'tribe' or 'tribal' to describe populations under study, and how do the connotations differ from 'ethnic group' or 'ethnicity'? Anthropologists must capture both local meanings and develop more general analytical categories, but in only a few contexts does the notion of 'tribe' usefully carry out this descriptive and analytical work.
Paper long abstract:
The notion of 'tribe' arose in Anthropology to depict particular forms of social organization, but at the same time was used in colonial administration to describe cultural-linguistic and quasi-ethnic groupings in general. This generalized notion that African identities are essentially 'tribal' has often been embraced by Africans themselves to signify who they are. In East Africa, the Arabic-derived notion of 'kabila' is often rendered as 'tribe' in English or 'tribu' in French. This paper asks in what contexts an analytical and descriptive discipline like Anthropology should use the term 'tribe' or 'tribal' to describe populations under study, how the connotations of the term might differ from 'ethnic group' or 'ethnicity'. The argument will be developed that Anthropologists must both capture local meanings and develop more general analytical categories, especially regarding collective identities of a public sort, but that in only a few contexts does the notion of 'tribe' usefully carry out this descriptive and analytical work.